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Fish Creek Canyon Day Hike
Superstition Wilderness
March 26, 2011
by Michael Humphrey
  Trail Map 
group
Chip, Wendy, Richard, Barry, Dick, Tamar, Quy, Eileen, Gary, Gary, Michael

There are 11 persons who got up early this morning to meet for the Fish Creek hike at 5:30 AM. Sunrise is at 6:30 when we will start hiking. When we start hiking it is cool and we can see the morning colors on the rocks as we start at the Tortilla Trailhead.

This is a road that with 4 wheel drive and skid plates you could drive. We stay on this road for 4 miles as we walk to the old Tortilla Ranch. The exit to the top of Fish Creek is unmarked, but Wendy has her GPS and I gave her the coordinates. We then walk over to the rim of the canyon and look down to where we will be going.

rim
It gets mighty rugged down there.
bees
Bees are a’buzzin’.

This is a steep slope, but easy to traverse. At this point you can see the high cliffs that make up Fish Creek Canyon.

As we make our way down we cut across an animal trail that will lead us all the way down to the creek. Someone has been busy, because there are many cairns to mark this trail. On the way down we come across a bush that has many bees buzzing around the flowers.

We leave the bees alone as we continue on down. We make it to the bottom and the start of the hard part of the hike. We will take a rest at this point, because we have gone half the distance.

The next part of the hike will take the rest of the day and it is 9:30 AM in the morning.

hikers
We stop to rest by the quiet waters.

We continue on down the canyon having to cross the creek several times before coming to a place where I was in 2007.

The little beach to the right of the cave was where I took a picture of the dry cave. That area now has over 8 feet of water. We continue on down the canyon until we get to a nice spot for lunch. We stop here and rest.

I get out my water filter and fill up my water bottle. We could have make it the rest of the way on the water we had, but it was better to be safe than sorry. We now get to the part where we have to scramble over boulders.

wet
Can you believe this was dry in 2007?
UpPath
We’ve got to climb up to get around.
BoulderOnBoulder
Boulder On Boulder
AcrossWeGo
Across We Go

This is how the trail is for the next two miles. The picture also shows where past flood water have gotten too, with the logs stuffed under the boulder. You do not want to be in this canyon during a flood.

This is slow work as we find the best path to get through or over the boulders.

We will spend the next two hours going over and around boulders for a one mile gain to the end of the trail.

We are now getting close to the end of the boulders, but now we have to find the hidden trail that will get us across the cliff. The cliff trail is hard to see, but easy to walk on. It starts behind the large rocks on the right of the picture. We are now just about out, so we stop here to take the group shot.

The last obstacle is a 10 foot cliff, but wait, there is a hidden slide down to the bottom. The past floods have moved the rocks and closed the slide, so we have to find another path.

We find a little tunnel though the boulders just below the group shot area. Time to get wet as the tunnel has knee deep water in it. Looking back we can see the last boulder that the group shot was taken from.

boulder
Are you sure this boulder is the last one?
The slide was between the white boulder in front and the reddest boulder behind it. It is over 10 foot from the bottom of the white boulder to its top, so you can get an idea of the amount of water need to move these boulders. There is a large expanse of white rock that some sun bathers are on to the left of the last boulder that let us miss the rest of the boulder field.

At this point we join up with a Boy Scout Troop that rappelled down the cliffs. They join us in the exit from Fish Creek Canyon. The bridge over Fish Creek is just ahead, so you have to look behind you to see the trail up to Hacksaw Tom’s cave and the exit from Fish Creek Canyon. Up on the bridge we can see the sun shining on the cliffs that are just below where we left the cars to go on this hike.

I walk to my truck and bring it back to the tried hikers beside the bridge and Eileen has hitched a ride up to her truck and brought it down. We get everyone into the vehicles. We get back to Tortilla Trailhead by 5:30 PM and get persons and gear switched between the vehicles so we can head back to town. Some of us stop at the town of Tortilla Flat for dinner. This was a fun hike in a slot canyon with a tough boulder scramble at the end.

end
Shadows are getting long, but we’re out of there.
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updated January 15, 2020